"Go ye and multiply," God so commanded and we complied. We have populated the world and continue to do so. We had assumed that the more children or grandchildren, the more we were blessed because we had more hands in the fields to till the barren and fertile lands for our own good. At present times, some continue the assumption but more and more are feeling the burden of growing a family beyond one child. But we continue to procreate or not procreate because of personal reasons. Somewhere in time but very evident in our days, the perfect obedience has turned to outright disobedience. To populate then was a necessity. Now that we are overpopulated, some of us would advocate some measures that are contrary to our existing church precepts. This is a discourse to present many aspects of family planning. It is of course a discussion of contraception which has played a prominent role not in the way the Catholic Church teaches.

    A Catholic Dictionary by Donald Atwater defines contraception as "a barbarous but more accurate name for birth control". To be fair, the generic definition of contraception by the Webster Dictionary would serve well for this dissertation. Contraception is the artificial prevention of the fertilization of the human ovum and is often called birth control. The Catholic church prefers the term "family planning" instead of birth control.

   In the Criterion/Question Corner of the Indianapolis Catholic Newspaper, Fr. Jon Dietzen offers an answer to the question of the origin of contraception. As far as we know, Jesus never taught anything explicitly about the subject of birth control.  Presumably, for a variety of reasons, including technological, the question most likely never came up. The Church's position on the subject as most other moral teachings developed gradually. Questions of right or wrong surfaced in people's lives and the Church responded with its insights of faith. In his famous Pastoral rules for example, Pope St. Gregory the Great (590-640) taught that married couples may have intercourse to have children but if any enjoyment is mixed with it, they sin against the law of marriage. (Virginity then and prior to this period was emphacized heavily in terms of moral living.) Only in the last 200 years has respectable Catholic theology openly recognized that mutual married love and affection have an essential even primary significance in sexual intercourse. This was acknowledged especially by Popes Pius XI, Paul VI, John Paul II and even most profoundly in the first encyclical of Benedict XVI, God is Love (Part 6). Scholars agree today that Scripture texts by themselves cannot resolve the birth control question. Other morally persuasive reasons must also be brought. The Catholic teaching on the subject is clear and was summarized and reiterated in the historic 1968 encyclical letter of Pope Paul VI, "Humanae Vitae".

   The practice of contraception on a large scale was a phenomenon that began in France in the last quarter of the 18th century. It was first publicly advocated as a social good in England in 1822. For most of the 19th century, there was still a general, social, medical and political hostility to the idea. Then in the last quarter of the 19th century, Malthusian Leagues began an active advocacy of birth control. European governments at the same time were becoming increasingly conscious of the role of the population and tended therefore to look with disfavor upon the movement. Church authorities began a vigorous campaign against contraception with condemnation of contraception by the German hierarchy in 1913, by the French in 1919 and by the U.S. hierarchy in 1920 and reaching its climax in Pius XI's Casti Connubii, "Any use whatever of marriage, in the exercise of which, the act by the human effort, is deprived of its natural power of procreating life violates the law of God and nature and those who do such a thing are stained by a grave and mortal flow." (Acta Apostolica Sedis 22:560, 1930).

Pope Paul VI

In the next 35 years, the theology of marriage underwent discussions and development. With fear of population liability, questions arose as to whether the Church's teaching might change in the light of changing socio-economic conditions. Pope Pius XII, in an address to hematologists in 1956, labeled such opinions erroneous and affirmed that these preparations (birth control pills) are forbidden by the law of God when deliberately used as contraception or as temporary sterilizing agents. With these and other questions in mind, Pope John XIII established a commission to study the matter and to present information and opinions on anything pertinent to the question. In the meantime, he and his successor, Pope Paul VI, affirmed that the teachings of the preceding popes still held. Pope Paul VI expanded the commission to include persons from even more competencies with a promise to study whatever data they could supply and on March 27, 1968,

put to them the question, "In what form and according to what norms ought spouses accomplish in their exercise of mutual love that service of life to which their vocation call them?" (L'Osservatore Romano). Cardinal Julius Dopfner, the co-president of the commission presented the commission's final report to Pope Paul VI on June 28, 1966. It concluded that the Catholic position on artificial contraception "could be sustained by reasoned argument". Finally in July, 1968, two years after the commission's recommendation has been submitted, Pope Paul VI issued his formal answer and judgment in his encyclical HUMANAE VITAE, again reaffirming the centuries-old teaching that the deliberate positive action of preventing life-giving act between husband wife is against the law of God. In doing this, he agreed with the minority report and rejected the recommendations of the majority statement of the commission as contrary to the teaching of the Church and therefore, unacceptable. (ENCYCLICAL - the official oral teaching by the Pope - not necessarily infallible. When the Pope sits down and chooses to speak ex cathedra, then it becomes a Dogma, a truth revealed by God and therefore, to be believed.
   (To be continued)